


Tea

by Fancy Lads Snacks (Filthy_Bunny)



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 14:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5130290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Filthy_Bunny/pseuds/Fancy%20Lads%20Snacks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little one-shot based on a one-word prompt ('tea') at the Fallout kinkmeme. Poor Boone's in-game endings are mostly pretty depressing. This is the ending I choose for him instead. </p>
<p>(Fits in with my 'Judesville' stories, but they don't need to be read for context.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tea

She first invited Boone round for tea a few days after he and the Courier had helped get her and her friends out of Gomorrah. He assumed it was just an odd turn of phrase, but sure enough, when he got to her room in Vault 21 there was a little tea set laid out on a cloth on the side table. It was orange with yellow and white flowers around the lid of the pot, and one of the cups had no handle, so she made sure Boone had the unbroken one.

He felt awkward as hell sitting there with a tiny cup and saucer, but Joana looked so thrilled to be doing something normal that he couldn’t bring himself to mind. The tea set had been her first purchase, she told him. The second was the vault jumpsuit was wearing. She looked thrilled about that, too, doing a little turn for him to show it off. She hadn’t owned anything in a long time. He smiled and told her how nice she looked. It was no lie. She was glowing.

So far, Boone hadn’t hurt Cachino for what had been done to her. The Courier had talked him down. The man was a worm, they were agreed on that, but the last thing they needed was a gang war breaking out on their doorstep when the Legion still demanded so much of their attention. Boone supposed he was right, and he’d agreed to leave Cachino alone for now. He’d left him a gift, though: a single .308 caliber shell placed in the centre of Cachino’s desk. A friendly reminder that Boone might just be the last thing he never saw.

Boone talked more over those cups of tea than he did anywhere else. He was comfortable around Joana. They’d both seen their fair share of ugly, and they silently recognised that in each other. She was also the only person he knew who’d been close to Carla. They’d worked together on the Strip, long before Craig had come along and swept Carla up and away into the desert.

Joana talked excitedly about how Carlitos was going to do the same with her. Move her out of the Strip once and for all and find a nice little house somewhere. She wanted to grow corn and pull water from a well and watch birds in her yard. Boone hoped she got what she longed for, though he doubted it would be with Carlitos. Usually Boone came visiting when the other man wasn’t around, but sometimes he’d be there, puffing himself up bigger in his chair and talking about guns and gambling like it was the only language Boone would understand.

After a month or two, Joana and Carlitos moved out of Vault 21 and into a small apartment in Freeside. It had holes in the ceiling and no running water, but Boone would still visit and Joana would still serve him tea. She still talked about her dreams, but less about Carlitos. Her smiles didn’t come as easy.  

Boone may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he understood the way she looked at him sometimes. Sometimes she touched his hand while they were talking. It made him ache deep down. In part because of Carla. His wife may be gone, but their bond wasn’t. But most of all it hurt him because he didn’t want Joana to pass her affections from one sorry man to another like this. He would support her if she wanted rid of Carlitos. But he wouldn’t have her settling for him.

Eventually he decided she should know the truth. She’d be upset, but maybe it would keep her gaze from lingering on him the way it did. He fixed his eyes on the tea leaves in the bottom of his cup, and made his confession. He told her everything. Bitter Springs. What happened to Carla. How he’d followed her trail, and set her free the only way he could. He was surprised how light it made him feel. Like setting down a heavy pack.

When he looked up at Joana, her face was shining with tears. He started to apologise, but before he could finish she climbed right into his lap and kissed him. Salt tears on her sweet lips. It took everything he had, but he pulled her arms from him and told her he couldn’t be that for her. She cried a little more, but she let him go.

A couple of days later, Carlitos and one of his friends came after Boone in the street. There was a whole lot of yelling about whose woman had been doing what with whom, which Boone didn’t much care for. He left the two of them fit enough to limp out of Freeside.

*

Once the war was over, Boone helped get Joana set up in a little house in Outer Vegas with money she’d saved from holding down various jobs. She tended bar at the Atomic Wrangler at night and worked crops or helped out in the Co-op in Westside during the day. She’d taken a room at the Casa Madrid after she and Carlitos had parted ways.

Outer Vegas was safer than it used to be, but Boone insisted on giving her a shotgun and teaching her how to shoot. They still drank tea from that little orange set.

Sometimes he stayed the night, even though he kept promising himself he wouldn’t.

Eventually he started to notice some changes in her. She was distracted when he was around. Sometimes she was pale and restless. One day he spotted her coming out of the Old Mormon Fort, and the look on her face was pure guilt. He knew the signs.

“It’s okay,” he told her. He’d known this would have to come sooner or later. “I don’t mind who he is, so long as he’s a good man.”

Joana called him an uncivil name she’d never used before. She stood facing him across her kitchen table, hands on her hips, and told him two things. The first was that Cachino was dead. Killed with a shotgun in an alleyway near Gomorrah. No witnesses. Wasn’t that the damnedest thing.

When she told him the second thing, Boone dropped his pretty little teacup on the floor.

*

Boone took a trip out to the new trading post at Cottonwood Cove to call on the Courier in his crooked little house. They sat in his kitchen and drank coffee from cups that didn’t match. When Boone told him his news, the Courier grinned wider than he’d ever seen him. He tossed away the coffee and poured them whisky instead, then hollered for his boyfriend to get his ass in there. The doctor appeared a minute later, his shirt half-buttoned and a damp towel round his shoulders.

The Courier let Boone out of the tight hug he’d wrapped him in, and turned triumphantly to Arcade.

"We’re gonna be uncles!”


End file.
